Encyclopedia.com
Online encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Encyclopedia.com[1] is an online encyclopedia. It aggregates information, images, and videos from other published dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference works.
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Screenshot  Homepage in October 2024 | |
Type of site | Online encyclopedia |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Gale |
| Created by | Infonautics |
| Revenue | Display advertising |
| URL | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | No |
| Launched | March 1998 |
| Current status | Online |
Content license | Copyrighted |
| OCLC number | 405663034 |
History
The website was launched by Infonautics in March 1998.[2] Infonautics was acquired by Tucows in August 2001.[3]
In August 2002, Patrick Spain bought Encyclopedia.com and its sister website eLibrary from Tucows and incorporated them into a new company called Alacritude, LLC (a combination of Alacrity and Attitude).[4] The business became known as HighBeam Research and was eventually sold to Gale.[5][6] For a time the website was operated by Chicago-based company Highbeam Research, a subsidiary of reference publisher Gale, which itself is a subsidiary of Cengage.[7][5]
Enycyclopedia.com saw its traffic decline by more than three quarters from approximately 4 million visits monthly in 2022, to under 1 million in 2025.[8]
Content
Encyclopedia.com allows users to access information on a subject that is derived from multiple encyclopedias and dictionary sources,[9] and it has nearly 200,000 entries and 50,000 topic summaries. It provides a collection of online encyclopedias and entries from various sources, including Oxford University Press, Columbia Encyclopedia, and Gale, its parent company.[10][11]